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Third-life Crisis?

~tskaalgard

Lately I've been struggling with my impending thirties and the implications that has on various things. I feel like in spirit I'm just a very responsible and emotionally mature teenager with more money and responsibilities. Otherwise I don't really feel any different with regards to my interests or behavior. I have to work out more and eat more consciously but otherwise I'm largely the same.

I've been grappling with this lately and this is what I've determined:

It seems everyone has weird ideas about what they're "supposed to" do as they climb their 20s and approach their 30s. The only thing you have to do is be responsible for yourself- otherwise it doesn't matter. There's no law that says you have to be in bed by 9 or leave the party by 8 or stop playing video games or watching anime or whatever you do that brings you joy.

Lately I've been struggling with this somewhat, as I'm only 10 months away from the onset of my thirties and I've been having a strange quarter-life crisis about it.

The things that were important to me as a teenager in the 2000s are still very important to me. I still want to stay up chatting online with friends til 4 AM, discovering new music and reading strange webpages in some dimly-lit corner of the internet. I still want to walk around outside at a party with a couple good friends just to get away from the noise. I still want to have LAN parties and road trips to conventions. There's no reason I need to stop any of these things and I refuse to.

I will continue to enjoy myself and I will stop caring what others think about this.

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Replies

~nopalm wrote (thread):

Don't change a thing unless you want to! I felt the same towards my late 20's and tried all kinds of things to change up my life, try to expand my world. Some of it was good experience, but a lot of it just took me further from where I really wanted to be. Now that I am in the later half of my 30's and married, its getting back to the things I really enjoy (which happen to be very similar to what I did in my teens - including hanging out here)

~ew wrote (thread):

Hej! I feel invited to share a secret with you :-) Ok, it's not a secret any more then, right? Ah, not a problem. I'm closing in on 60. And I still feel like a teenager. Ok with more money in my pocket, but that also takes some of the creative fun away ... I still try to enjoy the fascinating things out there --- despite the currently ongoing very annoying microbiological activity --- there is an unbelievable number of fascinating things on this small planet. Enjoy, while you still can.

Small example: recently I had a few neighbors over to look at 20 to 40 year old slides. Yepp. The old fashioned stuff with a projector :-) And my guest had never been to the US Southwest, their faces were gazing in awe. There is nothing like this where I live. So go, go out, look! And always take care.

A Margarita, once the dark ale is empty! Thanks, ~bartender.

And to ~tskaalgard: Live long and prosper and a little silly along the way! Cheers!

~inquiry wrote (thread):

> I will continue to enjoy myself and I will stop caring what
> others think about this.

I'd tell you what to do, but then you'd have to start caring what I think again. ;-)

~till-we-have-faces wrote (thread):

You must have recently had others look at you and transmit their thoughts: "why is he still living as if he were free?" Of course, it wasn't expressed that way. It was an "oh..." or a "you're still doing that?"

Speaking 20 years beyond your 30, the only way I can watch anime is in an all-night Miyazaki eggs-stravaganza.